It was a hot Sunday morning last July when, right on schedule at 6:30 a.m., 61-year-old Johnny Lee Butts left his rural Mississippi home on his morning ritual, a 4-mile walk.

His neighbor, Otis Brooks, says Butts, a Sunday school teacher, waved as he passed his front door wearing a blue T-shirt.

Brooks remembers that his neighbor's skin tone was easily visible that morning. "You could tell he was black; you could see his arms." The point would become important later.

At nearly 7 a.m., about an hour after sunrise, three white teenagers were barreling down Panola County Mississippi Highway 310 in a white Monte Carlo. Two of the three teens later admitted they had been heavily drinking vodka and smoking marijuana all night. They were headed right toward Butts.

soundoff(One Response)

michelle

I am outraged that the police don't see this as a hate crime. I am a white female and I am married to a black man. Them 3 ran that man over due to the fact he black. It was done on purpose with intention. It's a hate crime besides murder. It's a dam shame that in these times there is still racism. I know because I still get remakes and so do my children. Its time to stop racism and stop the police from covering this hate crime up.